It’s the most wonderful time of the year, playoff best ball is here! Playoff best ball is a highly strategic game where you draft a best ball roster focused on NFL team playoff advancements in conjunction with player fantasy points. Follow the guidelines below to gain an advantage against the competition.
Tournament Breakdown
Each draft there is one goal, draft a roster that scores the most points over the NFL Playoffs. Much easier said than done. If you do not select the correct combination of high scoring players, your teams will not win one of these tournaments. Let’s start with the basic information about the tournaments, then dive into deeper strategy.
- Cumulative scoring tournament: No advancements, you are playing against every entry for four rounds.
- 12 round snake draft: 6 teams drafted
- Starting Lineup: 1 Quarterback, 1 Running Backs, 2 Wide Receivers, 1 Tight End and 1 Flex (RB, WR or TE)
- Draft teams with a chance to be in the Top 50 to maximize your payout.
Build for the entire NFL playoffs
There is a delicate marriage required on Drafters due to the cumulative scoring between picking the highest scoring players, maximizing your number of advancing live players and picking the correct Super Bowl matchup. To understand this marriage, we have to consider the Super Bowl and work our way backwards. Points scored in the Super Bowl do not have a multiplier applied, however they are worth more due to scarcity as the far majority of the players on rosters will score 0. There are three possible Super Bowl matchup combinations:
- Double Bye Teams
- Solo Bye Team
- Zero Bye Teams
Your first three selections place your team into one of these three categories. These are your core players that must carry you through the Super Bowl. All three do not need to play in the Super Bowl though. Your remaining player pool and decisions are dictated by the category.
Double Bye Teams
Each player from a bye team is playing a maximum of three games, losing 25% of the playing time available to a non-bye player, if you go this route, you must select the correct bye players to win. Players missing the Wild Card round can have a massive impact on your team’s cumulative points scored if the team is not constructed well. The winning teams in $20 and $3 in 2023 were Double Bye Teams. One had four players live in the Super Bowl, the other had five. These are not full lineups. Both had Jalen Hurts and Travis Kelce. Through my review of last year’s top teams a trend became very apparent, in a Double Bye Team Super Bowl you must have a quarterback paired with three to four other players from the game. These should be two quarterback teams as one of your quarterbacks is on bye. Outside of the bye teams, you need to score a large amount of points in the Wild Card round. Look for players that are stars with high spike week potential, this isn’t a time to be adding the 4th or 5th options on other teams with high Super Bowl probabilities. D.K. Metcalf’s 35.6 points in the 2023 Wild Card round is a perfect example. Zach Charbonnet will not likely score 35.6 points over the entire playoffs, let alone in a spike week format to crack your lineup. Count on your bye players scores in the remaining three rounds, with a few leftover players contributing here or there.
Solo Bye Team
In an ideal world, build a Solo Bye Team without the bye quarterback as it provides an extra roster to work with. Use the extra roster spot to add depth at the positions your bye players play specifically for the Wild Card round.
Zero Bye Teams
Your early draft picks are now ideally filling the starting lineup for all four games. This will allow you to build deeper stacks, and focus on drafting from less NFL teams. Don’t overstack though, there is no reason to have eight or more players from the Super Bowl. Five, six or seven should be your target. You still need high scoring non-Super Bowl selections to differentiate you from the teams with the same Super Bowl combination. Inherently, bye players would only be in your lineup for two games, lowering their value within a tier.
How many NFL teams should you draft players from
There is not a simple correct answer. Draft players from a minimum of four NFL teams. Any amount less than this and you are too concentrated to find the scoring outbursts needed to win first place. Two Bye Teams need more NFL teams than One Bye Teams, which need more NFL teams Zero Bye Teams. Drafting a primary team from one conference and secondary team(s) from the other conference is the preferred roster construction as it provides you with more outs to Super Bowl matchups. This edge is amplified if you draft the quarterback on your primary team. This can be a challenge (and sometimes impossible) with 12 roster spots and the reason it is preferred not required.
Positional allocations
- Quarterback – 1 to 2
- Running back – 2 to 4
- Wide Receiver – 4 to 7
- Tight End – 1 to 3
Base your allocations on the amount of draft capital you have spent on each position and which positions contain bye players. The higher the pick(s), the less depth needed unless bye(s).
Be different
Getting different on Drafters is how you separate from the other teams with the same first three round selections.
- RB with QB
The market generally thinks of stacking as quarterbacks with pass catchers. Stacking running backs with quarterbacks is also helpful. This captures the majority of the touchdowns for the teams you are selecting to play in the Super Bowl. - Spike week possibility
Draft one off players that have a reasonable path to have a spike week or two. Think of a player like Nico Collins, not Josh Palmer. Or Evan Engram, not Cade Otton. - Ownership percentage matters
Spend time focusing on the players not being drafted very often or at all. If DK Metcalf is the only Pittsburgh Steeler being drafted frequently, and somehow the Steelers win their Wild Card matchup on the back of two Kenny Gainwell touchdowns, the teams with Gainwell benefit enormously. - Late picks who play two games
Getting late picks for two games is a massive perk, the majority of successful lineups last year had one or two of them. Target multiple players on a team who is a big underdog that you believe has a shot to win Wild Card weekend. If you can’t fit multiple players, draft someone who could get multiple touchdowns that is rarely being drafted. - Does your TE differentiate?
Tight End is a brain teaser. I’m willing to sacrifice TE from my Super Lineup on Drafters rather than force someone terrible.
ADP is a myth
Do not be tethered to ADP. There’s a fair case to be made that ADP is relatively silly in all best ball formats. Even if you are a believer, this is the best ball format where it matters the absolute least.
Do not worry about taking Troy Franklin 6 picks ahead of ADP on your Nix team. If it makes sense, do it. Other times you may get boxed out at quarterback and must begin drafting a three player stack in the eighth round and their ADPs are all in the high 50’s.
Know your odds and matchups
Be aware of the playoff odds, potential byes, potential Wild Card matchups and playoff paths for each individual day you are drafting. In an ideal world most of your players will be able to advance and be alive in the Conference Championship round. This can be a lot of work; we have resources available to help: Playoff Odds / Matchups.
Draft in waves
Space out when you draft your teams to capitalize on the full window until the contests close on January 10 (or when filled). Prices will move each week, draft as if you are in a time capsule. Predicting what will happen in upcoming games to get combinations that will no longer be available once the market reacts is a great strategy. It will increase your chances of building a super team, be aware it may create dead teams too. Remember though, any team not in the top 50 is basically dead.
Judge your peers
Being aware of what has happened in your draft room is a huge advantage. These contests are highly strategic, we should try to identify the peers who understand the contest and those who don’t. This information will help inform you on when to take a quarterback and the probability to set up a clean stack.
Be on the lookout for the QB sniper who took Hurts and Stafford at the Round 1/Round 2 turn. You may want to draft Nix for your stack in Round 3 instead of pushing to Round 4.
You want other logical drafters in your rooms, find those peers by seeing who is staying in their lane. They may have drafted Saquon and Jalen Hurts for their NFC team, then in the 3rd round drafted Henderson to begin building an AFC team. Throughout the draft, you may be able to place some trust in them to draft rationally allowing you to build the best version of your team (don’t be afraid to steal their players!).
Time to win
Winning first place in Best Ball tournaments is notoriously difficult. Spike Week’s TournamentDB is the ultimate edge—and for the first time, it’s available for playoff drafts. While I don’t have a screenshot yet, it will function just like it does for the regular season. Pair these guidelines with TournamentDB to maximize your advantage, and share your own drafting strategies in the Spike Week Discord.
